The Chronicles of Amber

She shook her head. “Our enemies do not often leave bodies. If he is dead, we will never know it.”

I found myself agreeing. After battles, we had seldom been able to recover our dead comrades from lands the hell-creatures controlled. What they actually did with the corpses remained open to conjecture—and the guesses were never very pleasant.

Eyes distant, Freda shook her head sadly. I realized that she had cared deeply for young Alanar. We had something in common, then; I had lost Helda… she had lost her brother.

Swallowing, I reached out and gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze. “Best not to dwell on it,” I said softly. “These have been hard times for everyone.”

“You are right, of course.” Taking a deep breath, Freda placed Alanar’s card on the table, a little below Dworkin’s jester and to the right. Next to each other, their resemblance was even more striking. Clearly they were father and son.

“Pick again,” she said, indicating the Trumps.

Silently, I did so. It was another young man, this one dressed in browns and greens, with a wide pleasant version of Dworkin’s face. A faint dueling scar marked his left cheek, but he had a genial smile. He carried a bow in one hand and what looked like a wine flask in the other. A trickle of wine ran down his lips and beaded underneath his chin.

A young drunkard, the card seemed to suggest.

“Taine,” Freda announced, keeping her expression carefully neutral.

“I don’t know him,” I said.

“I think he is dead, too.”

“I’m sorry.”

We went through four more cards rapidly. Each showed a man between the ages of twenty and forty. Most bore some resemblance to Dworkin—either the eyes, the shapes of the faces, or the way in which they held themselves. His offspring almost certainly, I decided. It seemed he’d kept busy with a number of women over the years. How many children had he sired? And with such a large family, how had he still found so much time to spend with me during my own youth—all the while pretending to be unmarried? The next time I had him alone, I intended to ask.

Each of these cards Freda placed below Dworkin’s, circling the edge of the table. In all, counting Alanar and Taine, she thought four of Dworkin’s sons were dead. I didn’t recognize either of the other two.

Then I turned over a card that showed a man with my face, only his eyes were brown to my blue. He dressed all in dark browns and yellows, and he held a slightly crooked sword almost defiantly. I didn’t know if it was a private joke, but certainly the crooked sword seemed to imply one.

“Who is he?” I asked hesitantly. He looked familiar, too. Where had we met? And when?

“Do you know him?”

“He looks a lot like me…”

I held the card a minute, just staring at it, until she took it out of my hand and placed it below the others.

“Mattus,” she said. “His name is Mattus.”

“He’s dead, too,” I said numbly.

“How do you know?” she demanded, voice rising sharply.

I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t now. It’s like… like an old memory, distant and hazy. Or maybe a dream. I can almost see it, but not quite. I only know he was in it, though, and I saw him die.”

“What happened to him?” she went on. “How did he die?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t quite remember,” But I felt certain it hadn’t been pleasant, though I couldn’t bring myself to say so to Freda. I didn’t think she’d take the news well. Clearly she had cared for Mattus.

She sighed.

“Maybe it was only a dream,” I told her, trying to sound a little reassuring, a little hopeful, though deep inside I knew it for a lie. “Perhaps they are both still alive, somewhere.”

“Do not dismiss your dreams so easily. They are often powerful portents of the future. Over the years, I have had hundreds of dreams that proved to be true. If you say both Alanar and Mattus are dead, and you saw them die in a dream, it may very well be so.”

“It was only a dream.”

“Perhaps I believe because you saw it in a dream.”

“As you say,” I said with a small shrug. Most of the time, I put as little stock in dreams as in fortune- tellers.

Sitting back, I regarded her and her cards. It seemed she shared Dworkin’s strengths as well as his flaws. He had never been one to shy away from bad news, no matter how terrible. It was one lesson I had learned well from him.

I said, “Tell me about Mattus.”

“Like Alanar, he has been missing for about a year. Nobody has been able to contact him. He always had a quick temper, though, and one night he stormed off after a shouting match with Locke… and that was the last anyone heard of him.”

Locke was a disagreeable-looking, puffed-up man on one of the other Trumps I had drawn. She had mentioned him earlier, I recalled, with a disparaging note in her voice. Clearly they were at odds.

She added, “I had hoped Mattus would get over his sulk and simply show up one day, forgiving Locke and taking up where we had all left off, before…” She smiled wistfully and blinked back tears. “But that is not your concern right now, Oberon. Please, go on. Draw again.”

Quickly, I turned the next card.

“Aber,” she said. She added him to the other eight Tarot cards to form a circle around the top of the table.

I leaned forward for a better look at this prankster who painted cards so well. He was ruggedly handsome —at least as portrayed on the card—and he dressed all in deep reds, from his leggings to his tunic, from his gloves to his long, flowing cape. It was hard to tell, but I thought we looked about the same age. He had short brown hair, a close-cropped brown beard, and steady gray-green eyes. In his portrait he struck a valiant pose, but instead of a sword, he held a long paint brush. I gave a mental chuckle. Truly, he had a sense of humor that appealed to me.

I also saw a bit of Dworkin in him, the oddly whimsical side that only came out on rare occasions, usually at high holidays or festivals when he had drunk too much wine. Then he would delight one and all with small tricks of the hand, making coins appear and disappear, or recite epic tales of ancient heroes and their adventures.

It must have been a trick of the light, but as I studied Aber’s card intently, I would have sworn that it took on an almost lifelike appearance. It seemed to me that the tiny image blinked and started to turn its head—but before anything more could happen, Freda reached out and covered it with her palm.

“Do not!” she said in a warning tone.

I raised my eyes to her face, which had suddenly gone cold and hard. Perhaps, I thought, there was more to her than I first suspected. This was no mere fortune-teller, but a strong woman who had suddenly moved to action and taken charge of the situation. I admired her for that; I had never found much to like in weak-willed females. A woman of fire and steel added extra passion to a love affair.

“Why?” I asked blankly.

“It is already cramped in here. We do not need his company right now. And Father would be quite annoyed with me if I let him drag you away.”

“Very well,” I said, confused. For now, I had to trust her to look out for my best interests. Leaning back, I folded my arms and gave her my most trustworthy look. “I wasn’t trying to cause you trouble.”

She sighed, her manner softening. “No, not… trouble. Aber can be a… a distraction. That’s a good word for it. And a distraction is not what we need right now.”

I tilted my head and studied her cards from what I hoped would prove a safe distance. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that Aber’s picture had moved. But cards couldn’t come to life, could they?